Demon's Choice
by Devil Reader
Summary: Have you ever wondered what would happen to you if you did something evil in your life and what waited for you when you died? If you go to Hell, is there ever a chance for redemption? Based of the short story "Other People" in Neil Gaiman's "Fragile Things"


Author's Notes:

Hello, this is my first ever story and I'm really interested in people's opinion. The only bad review is no review. So, I'll be accepting any criticisms, bad and good ones. I'm perfectly happy with people's opinions too. ;)**  
**

**"Blah, blah"**-the demon is talking

"Blah, blah"-the main character is talking

**Time Skip**-scene change or time skip

Happy reading!

...

...

...

**"I wonder, what is in store for you?"** says the demon.

"Huh? W-what the h-hell are you talking about?" I stammered. The demon chuckled at my words and spoke again in that awful—_I never heard anything so bleak and hopeless_—voice, **"The hell you say? Well I hate to—actually I don't hate to—inform you, you are in hell."**

"What the h… What do you mean I'm in hell!" I yelled or tried to. It came out as a frightened squeak instead.

The demon merely stared at me. Its naked skin was a pale fish-belly color that only results from avoiding the sun like the plague…which may be true in—_his/her?_—its case. Its eyes were a flat merciless black. It had no identifying genitals to proclaim it male or female. It was about five feet and six inches tall which was coincidentally my height. It was completely hairless and its body was frighteningly akin to that of a human's, albeit a bizarrely creepy human, except for its empty eyes. Eyes void of any hope or other positive emotions found in any living eyes. They were dead eyes.

It turned around breaking me out of the trance I was in by staring at its eyes—_oh god its eyes_—and I finally took notice of our surroundings. We were in a dark room. At least, I thought it was a room. Dim light came from nowhere I could see and I had a sense of there being a ceiling, just out of sight. The top of the room seemed as if it could be open to a void where eldritch horrors lurked above us. If I listened hard, I could almost swear that I heard the soft sounds of inhuman screams echoing from above. I never looked up or listened to the ceiling-void again. I could see walls less than twenty feet away from us. The walls seemed to shift as if there were shadows of people running in terror behind it—_it must be a trick of my eyes, yeah j-just a trick_—but I only saw it out of my peripheral vision and when I looked at the walls directly, there was only the hypnotically sinister design of seemingly flickering, black flames—_how can fire be black?_—on them. In fact as I focused my vision on the perverse walls, I noticed the weapons.

I gulped, for they were torture devices of the most deadly kinds possible. There were all types imaginable from the standard whips, to the cat o' nine tails, to the pins to insert underneath your fingernails, to the knives,—_I don't want to know how it's going to use that k-knife_—to others beyond description. They all emitted an aura of pain and misery. I sweated and panted so hard that I almost foamed at the mouth as the demon approached the deadliest weapons of the lot.

It was enough to make anyone go insane with fear and the torture had not even started.

As the demon stood by and caressed a black, evil looking whip, it spoke, **"I suppose you believe that I am going to hurt you out of spite. I understand you don't truly believe you're in hell, but you have no choice, but to accept it."**

"Look I don't know who you are, but I want some answers and I want them now!" I blustered hoping that this…this thing would be cowed by a forceful tone. But, somehow, I didn't think it would be so easy.

**"Answers you say? Then think! Don't you remember the truck hitting you?"**

Suddenly, I remembered. A truck had hit me and I had been lying on a stretcher as people tried to save me. I remembered floating up, and then being yanked down a black, dark hole. Then I had appeared in this room of cruelty and stomach-churning dread.

_Thuda-thud, thump, thuda-thud, thump!_ My heart beat with a forceful, primordial fear. "I-I died?" I whispered.

Feebly with dread, I then hoarsely spoke, "I'll do whatever you want, j-j-just let me go back…please."

At my plea for help, the demon gave a low, bitter chuckle, **"You believe that you can ever go back? You, a drug dealer? One who brought pain and ruin to—far too many—others? Why do you think out of all others who have ever died, that you are special enough to have the laws of the universe bent and warped for your benefit?"**

"Please, I-I'll change. I'll be better, a good person," I begged, tears and snot running down my face as I realized how I had condemned myself to my fate with the pain and misery I had caused during my life.

**"Perhaps, but it is not my decision to make whether or not you are forgiven."** The demon whispered with a quiet and possibly regretful—_it can feel emotions?_—voice.

**"Now it is time for the pain to start,"**

I screamed until my throat was raw and bloody and couldn't possibly scream any more. And I screamed some more.

**Time Skip**

The torture went on for an endless amount of time. The demon slowly, but surely, worked through every single gruesome device of pain there are on the flickering walls. Even worse than the physical torture, was the mental torment. The demon knew every aspect of my life and soul. It knew me better than I knew myself. Every sin I committed, every sin I unintentionally committed, it repeatedly exposed and stripped bare of the lies and excuses I had made up to avoid the blame and the guilt. Forgetfulness of the sin was not an excuse.

**"Why did you knowingly hurt the little girl when you knew that all she wanted was to be with her mother?"**

"Because I was ordered to do it and if I hadn't kidnapped her, her mother would've spoiled the drug operations. Anyway someone else would've done it. I mean I even got a promotion to be the head of the gang for it!" I tonelessly rasped, my voice rendered rough as sandpaper due to the constant screaming and void of any emotions.

**"No, you did not do it for these foolish reasons. Or if you did, it wasn't only for these reasons."** It rebuked me harshly.

"Then I don't know!" I screamed, once again in frustration.

**"No? Than I'll tell you, you did it because you didn't care, and she was in the way."** The demon calmly scattering my lies with the blunt and ugly truth—_how does it know so much about me?_—as it always did. The blood-stained knife followed its words.

**Time Skip**

The tortures, mental and physical, never went on forever. I got periods of rest every so often. I would heal from the wounds—_magic?_—but I dreaded the breaks. I always was terrified of when the tortures would restart. I once screwed up my courage and asked why the torture didn't continue forever, the only time I spoke during the breaks. The demon replied that it was to keep me from going insane.

**Time Skip**

Once during the breaks—_time was meaningless_—it asked me, **"When are you going to learn to be good?"**

"What? I am I not learning what it means to be good, or at least how to not be evil? You teach me all about the consequences of my deeds and how I have hurt others." I replied in a dry, cracked tone.

The demon looked at me for a long moment and inquired, **"Then why do you still think of me as an 'it'?"**

Chills ran down my back and suddenly I felt something other than fear, despair, and apathy. I felt rage. This evil being, this creature of the depths, this…it…dared to look into my mind and preach to me about manners when it probably had done far worse things to other sufferers in hell like me than I had ever done in my entire life.

I kept my emotions from revealing themselves on my face as I had stopped showing or feeling anything but indifference. This was new.

**"Let's begin,"** The demon spoke, signaling the end of the break. It never asked me the question again.

Afterwards I began not to actually plan, but to gather my nerve to kill the demon. For some reason, the demon never tied me up to keep me still during the tortures. I always had freedom of movement, but no matter how quickly I moved or ran, the demon always managed to hit—_especially the most painful areas_—my body. Also, it had intimidated me so much that I never dared to retaliate. However, now I was ready to commit another sin—_is it really a sin to kill an evil being?_

Yet, I was still hesitant out of a fear of what it would do if I failed. If the torture was bad now, how much worse could it be with the demon enraged?

Time passed in this matter—_how long has it been?_—for a while.

**Time Skip**

Finally, after a particularly brutal session going over my pitiful life,—_must have been years since I died_—the demon stopped and gave me one of its soul-searching gazes and contemptibly uttered, **"Coward,"** and turned toward the not-walls.

It felt as if a bomb had detonated inside me, feelings of rage and fury that had been buried grew and grew until I had to let them out. I roared and—_FINALLY!—_struck the demon down with one blow. I grabbed a knife from the flame-wall and stood over it, panting in exertion from the unexpected surge of energy.

"Die," I spat and stabbed the demon through its heart.

The demon gasped in shock and grabbed weakly at the knife and looked at my eyes. I looked and snarled back at it as its blood pooled out of its chest. The blood was red like a human's and it had a heart with a slowing beat. I was faintly surprised that it had a heart at all.

Then, I noticed an image in its eyes. I never had been this close to the demon to stare into its eyes. It was the demon itself, but with a feral expression that I had never seen, rage. I glanced behind me fearing that the demon had a twin to save it—_how naïve I was_. But, no one was there, the dim room was empty as it always was, the demon and I were the only inhabitants. Then with a dawning suspicion, I realized the awful truth.

As I looked back at the demon, he said, **"At last you know. How I pity you,"**

**_He_** began to crumble into dust and faded away with a rueful smile on his lips.

I stood up and with a shaking hand, replaced the knife on the not-wall.

As I turned, I saw a man where there had been no one. He showed many emotions: pride, arrogance, avarice, and, most of all, fear. He stared back in shock, wondering what kind of diabolic creature I was.

I thought of how I was half way through my torment and how I finally could see an end to my sentence. For the first time in a long while, I felt hope.

I told the man, **"I wonder, what is in store for you?"**


End file.
